Ro Khanna Goes After Wall Street Landlords to Address Rising Home Prices
www.notus.org
Khanna introduced a bill on Tuesday going after private equity investors who have been buying up homes as speculative investments.
  • comador @lemmy.world
    592·
    1 month ago

    FFS. How about just deny the purchase of single family homes by all businesses altogether?

      • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
        131·
        1 month ago

        Sounds perfect, do it. I wanna see your income statement when you own 20 apartments.

        • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
          5·
          1 month ago

          Don’t remember what the business was but there have been cases of businesses using individuals names on paperwork, saying they own the business, but that person has zero responsibility and gets no pay for it. Probably it was on an episode of Last Week Tonight.

        • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
          1·
          30 days ago

          Not only would it make sense for each of the shell people to have the income on their own tax statements when running that sort of subsidizing loan operation, but its actually got fiscal incentive to be done that way because it puts them in lower brackets.

          Plus, given the number of foreign owners invested in US properties, it would be difficult or possibly even impossible to charge and expedite them for tax evasion given the tightly constrained budget of the IRS and therefor their inability to go after people without a gaurantee they can earn more back than they spend on the court proceedings.

          • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
            11·
            29 days ago

            I can’t follow your reasoning. If companies cannot own houses, how do you propose this shell-ownership would work? Wouldn’t the owner just be free to sell the house at any time and pocket the cash for themselves?

            As for tax evasion by foreigners that own real estate, I mean how is that even a problem? There’s millions of foreigners that do business in the US everyday, plus, these ones have actual immovable assets that can be seized…

            • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
              2·
              29 days ago

              Financing.

              The shell-owners would get paid to be a shell, and the properties would get financed under their names, thus circumventing the law.

              Because what I described above could be considered tax evasion, that is why it becomes another new problem when dealing with foreign investors.

              The US Government sells seized real estate dirt cheap, but that negatively impacts the shell owners who could fight it in court.

    • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      1 month ago

      Passing tax law is firmly in Congress’ remit. Telling corporations what they can and cannot buy is a whole lot stickier. The former is far easier.

  • LostMyRedditLogin@lemmy.world
    45·
    1 month ago

    They shouldn’t even be able to buy single family homes. They’re buying houses all over the world raising house prices. They belong in the trash with Airbnb.

  • someguy3@lemmy.world
    404·
    1 month ago

    Raise taxes? They’ll just pass the cost on to the renters. We need to forbid then from buying houses.

    • reddit_sux@lemmy.world
      14·
      1 month ago

      Yes beyond a limit that property would be unrentable due to high rent. Then since the property owner still would have to pay taxes on the property he might sell it.

      That is if the law is properly worded and properly applied.

  • just_another_person@lemmy.world
    131·
    1 month ago

    Good, but the damage is done, and they can afford those taxes which will only get caught on the backend resale.

    They need to be forced to divest immediately to do any real good.